Snow Angels
by TheShoelessOne
Summary: Five/Tegan. "You've got to make time, Tegan." He bounced slightly on the balls of his feet, smiling like a little boy with a secret. "Snow angels."


**Snow Angels**

It was snowing and the Doctor sat alone on a bench in Hyde Park to watch the white sheets fall in a welcome silence. His companions had made due with staying safe on the TARDIS with their cocoas trying their best to ignore one another. The Doctor was sure, as he usually was, that after a good half an hour (less, if he knew his companions at all) one of them would come storming out with a sour look and start complaining all over again.

This was meant to be a pleasant outing, something to take their minds off of all those unpleasant doings they'd run across lately. It all seemed unpleasant, now that he thought about it. Most of his dealings in time and space had been decidedly unpleasant recently.

But the snow helped. There was something about the way it deadened the sound, turned the world into something new, and everything was outlined and crisp. It was lessening now, no more than a trickle of invisible flakes.

The Doctor turned his head as crunching footsteps approached. It was a girl, full head of curly brown hair bouncing under a violet toboggan and she bounded through snow up past her small ankles. He placed her at five, though she might have been a little older. He was getting rather good at placing ages, being quite venerable himself, he thought with a chuckle. The girl looked up, big hazel eyes taking up most of her rosy-cold face, and she smiled. She bounded behind his bench and peered over the top of it just over his shoulder.

He turned his head to watch her line of sight and saw nothing but the drifting snow and the bare fingers of trees and bushes surrounding him.

"I'm hiding," the girl said in a conspiratorial whisper.

"Oh," the Doctor whispered back. "From whom?"

"My Auntie," she replied.

"Well, why don't you want her to find you?" the Doctor asked.

"I don't want to go back yet. She won't let me play in the snow."

"Why ever not?" He peered around for sight of the girl's aunt. "There's nothing wrong with a snow angel here and there."

The girl took a look around, then moved to the side of his bench to stand directly beside where he sat. "You be lookout," she instructed firmly.

He hunkered down slightly until he was at her eye level. "Well, what does your auntie look like? I can't very well keep track of her if I've no idea what to keep my eye open for."

The girl mimed a large hat or perhaps very highly-piled hair. "She's got a big fur hat. And a coat just like it."

"All right," he replied, grinning a crescent grin. He tapped one finger to his temple. "I've got my eye out. You make yourself that snow angel."

As the girl flopped down into the snow beside the bench, the Doctor craned his neck park-ward. If no one was looking after the girl, he thought it better to act as temporary guardian until her aunt appeared. On pretense, of course, of hiding the girl from the woman who refused to let her niece make angels in the snow.

The girl waved her arms and legs back and forth in the snow. "Don't you have any friends to play with?" The girl asked. The Doctor peered back down at her, head tilted inquisitively.

"Well, I'm not sure either of my friends are quite in the mood to play about in the snow. It's a bit too cold for them, I expect. Believe it or not, there's a time when people grow out of snowball fights."

The girl gasped and sat straight up in her angel. "Not you?"

"Of course not!" He protested, looking cross in a way that made the girl laugh. "I relish the thought of a good snowball fight. Especially with an arm like mine. Why, I'd decimate the competition!"

She laughed further. Snow trickled from a branch overhead. "You can be on my team."

"Surely," he nodded in return. "That is, if your Auntie doesn't arrive to spoil the fun."

"She says little girls shouldn't play outside as much as I do." She pouted fiercely, something the Doctor found strangely familiar. "She says it'll turn me into a boy."

"Well, you can tell her that she's wrong," he said, crossing his arms. "It's impossible for a bit of physical activity to change you from a girl into a boy. And if she persists any further on that idea, tell her the Doctor told you so it must be true."

"Are you always right, Doctor?" She asked. The light was leaving the world very slowly, turning the snow a lavender gray that nearly reflected the city sky overhead.

"Usually," he said with a widening smile, lips pressed together. He tilted his head up as he heard the familiar sound of the TARDIS door slamming in frustration. "That will be one of my friends. And just on time, if I'm not mistaken." He turned back to the girl. "It's getting dark, and you oughtn't be talking to strangers, you know."

"You're not so bad," she replied, getting to her feet to stare at her snow angel with an artist's scrutinizing eye. Her head snapped up at a voice calling softly through the snow. "She's coming!"

"Stay here," the Doctor advised as he levered himself up. "I'll distract her and you run to that little thicket over there." He pointed out the clutch of bushes only a handful of feet away from their bench.

She nodded and took off at a waddle through the deepening snow.

The Doctor made sure that the girl was well hidden before getting to his feet and taking off in the direction of the voice. Hands in pockets, he approached an older woman in a tall fur hat and what looked to be a very warm fur coat. Her brow spoke of suffering, lips pouting in a way the Doctor found eerily familiar. As he stepped nearer, removing his hat and releasing the snow that had fallen there across his shoes, the woman grabbed her handbag as if about to swing.

"Pardon me," the Doctor began, "but are you looking for a girl about yeah-high with a little purple knit cap?" He approximated the girl's height with his hat hand at his side.

The woman deflated with relief. "Oh, you've found her?"

"She's in that little bunch of bushes over there," he told her, not turning to point it out. "She believes that I'm distracting you." He paused, returning his hat to his head, and his smile fell slightly. "She doesn't get to see snow very often, does she?"

The woman shook her head. "No, they don't get much snow in Brisbane, I'm afraid." She laughed at her own joke, the last of the tension leaving her. "Thank you very much for keeping an eye on her. I can't keep up like I used to."

Before the woman could step past him, the Doctor detained her by clearing his throat. "Let her make her angels. It won't hurt anyone."

With that, he stepped away into the snow and left the girl to be intercepted by her aunt. He followed his footsteps back to where he'd hidden the TARDIS--the footsteps alongside his own told him that it had been Turlough who had marched angrily into the park with the slam of a door--and welcomed himself back into the warmth of the blue box with a sigh.

He removed the winding scarf from around his neck (they scratched something awful; he didn't know why he'd previously insisted on them so wholeheartedly) and let it hang on the rack alongside his hat and coat.

A sigh echoed in the console room, and he turned to catch Tegan staring at the darkening sky outside on the scanner. The lights had dimmed for night, throwing the whole room into a play of shadows, and hers fell right across the console as she leaned lightly back against it.

"A little tiff?" the Doctor asked as he stepped up beside her.

"He's a real piece of work, Doctor," she grumbled, not looking away from the scanner. "Sometimes I wonder where you manage to pick us up, of all people."

The Doctor turned his head to watch the snow, the violet night sinking in, the sparkling sheet in the lamplight. "You mostly manage to come to me," he replied, smirking. He added a comforting hand to her shoulder. "He'll be back after working off that steam. What about you?"

"What _about_ me?"

"Are you all right?"

She crossed her arms and, in an unusual fashion, avoided the subject altogether. "I don't get to see snow that often," she said almost absently.

"Hmm?" He asked, turning to face her again.

"Well, Brisbane isn't exactly the skiing capitol of the world," she replied with a little laugh in her voice.

"No," he said, his brows furrowing as his eyes flicked off of her for a moment and into the emptiness of the TARDIS. His eyebrows flicked up in surprise. "No it isn't."

Her eyes were hazel. Very close and hazel. He laughed helplessly, suddenly. She turned, searching him for signs of insanity with a quick flick of her eyes. He hugged her shoulder close against his chest as he grabbed her by the opposite shoulder and squeezed.

"A bit of fresh air isn't going to kill you," he said, releasing her shoulder and twirling away back toward the coat rack. "Come on, Tegan. I know for a fact that there's nothing more you want to do than go out into that snow and throw a few well-placed snowballs at Turlough's head." He slipped his coat on his arms and took hers off the rack and offered it to her across the room. "I have a good arm. You can be on my team."

She caught the coat that he tossed at her and, without even thinking, slipped it on. The TARDIS door opened and there he stood in the doorway. Backlit by glowing lamplight, hand outstretched and his wry little smile turned up on one side of his face. Wiggling his fingers encouragingly at her. The cold smell of winter blowing in through the door at her, swirling snow dancing all around him as he stood between her and the snowy park.

It was more than contagious; she smiled, her mouth like a wedge cut from the moon between her lips. She took his hand, and together, they bounded out into the snow.

The world had turned to silence. Just their breathing, fogging as soon as it stepped from their mouths. He turned to her, the lights shining in his eyes, snowflakes caught in his hair, his eyelashes.

"You've got to make time, Tegan," he told her.

"Hmm?" she asked, blinking as if waking.

He bounced slightly on the balls of his feet, smiling like a little boy with a secret. "Snow angels," he told her simply.

There's something about the lighting. The moon, still a ghost in the heavy twilight, refracting in the tiniest of snowflakes. How the snow stuck in her hair. The tingle in the air, turning the flesh of her face raw and red already. How she was still smiling, head tilted, the very idea of winter and snow and that cold night tied tight to her bones and running in her blood. It was all written across her eyes, the same playful childishness as she'd hidden from her aunt that cold evening in Hyde Park.

It was so easy to kiss her. His fingers barely found hold at her jaw line, already cold in the wind and the snow. Smiling, lips pulled back, watching softly as her eyes changed at that one touch of just three fingers at her cheek. Nose to nose, a nod of his head almost imperceptible as noses brushed, breath warmed cheeks. He gave her plenty of time to pull back, step away, punch him if she felt the need to. She wasn't smiling, but she hadn't stopped him.

A single press of his lips to hers, the only warm thing about her as all the blood rushed to her face and head and turned her head blank and heavy.

She linked her fingers behind his head, blond hair threaded between them, tilting her head and breathing the breath he released as they came together again.

His hands found a place against her hips, warming everywhere his fingers drew. Two hearts beating against her ribs from the other side. Her teeth tasted like cocoa. The air was too cold when they drew it in, filling hot lungs and stinging their insides.

Then, as she leaned in even further, he pulled his face back just enough to avoid her searching lips. Her eyes fluttered open in confusion, her face stuck half-frozen in its position between them left exposed to the cold wind. He was smiling. Apple-cheeked and grinning softly with a moony look in his clear blue eyes.

"I know of a couple of snowballs with Turlough's name written all over them," he said in a close voice, as if they needed to remain hidden from something.

He gripped her hands, close, confidential. She corrected her fish-like stare. She wanted to ask why, it was as obvious as the stars in the sky. She was so easy to read, sometimes. And once her apprehension had melted away, he smiled even further and pressed a long kiss to her cold cheek. He bounded away into the snow, pulling her along with their fingers knit.

Tegan would be left to wonder about the sweet kiss (warm bodies mixing in the cold, her leg kicking up behind her despite herself, hands in his hair, bunching up great fistfuls of it like she'd wanted to for ages, swaying almost like a dance, like trees in the wind) for days. She thought they were days. They felt like days. But as they caught Turlough off-guard and pelted him with stinging wet snowballs, watching the Doctor crow with laughter, she felt almost like a cold winter day a long time ago. Like a child in her violet toboggan making angels in the snow.

* * *

AN: Plot bunny. I have no other reason. These two are shuffling about my mind like they own the place, and there's no better way for me to deal with it than mindless fluff. I sure enjoy it, even if I have no reason for writing it. Hope you do too! Leave us some love and don't forget to STAY AWESOME!


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